


Though Some Have Called Thee Mighty and Dreadful

by SylvanWitch



Series: Proving the Exception [9]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the Third bond, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They weren't allowed to be off.  If they wanted to keep their jobs, they had to prove that the Bond was an advantage every fucking minute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though Some Have Called Thee Mighty and Dreadful

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place sometime after the Third Bond is consummated and before the events of _The Day Phil Coulson Stumbled_. I'd referred to the tests that S.H.I.E.L.D. had made them undergo before allowing them back in the field as a Bonded couple. This is one of those tests.

The thing about being Bonded is that everyone expected them to always know exactly what the other was thinking, saying, and doing.

  
It was tiring, the weight of that expectation.  Irritating, too, if Clint and Phil were having an off day.

  
If, say, Clint were feeling particularly vulnerable after having been thrown—again—off a perch by a supersized monster.  If he’d had to be rescued by Tony in his suit or Natasha in the Quinjet.  Or Coulson, risking his life to save Clint’s.

  
Or if Coulson were reeling from an op gone wrong, from the loss of good agents he’d raised from callow arrogance into legitimate competence.

 _  
Shit happened_ , Clint wanted to say to the expectant faces in the operations center or on the bridge of the Helicarrier.  _Shit happened, and we’re not one hundred percent.  Give us a day.  An hour.  Give us a fucking minute._

  
But they weren’t allowed to be off.  If they wanted to keep their jobs, they had to prove that the Bond was an advantage every fucking minute.

  
Even right now, when Clint could feel Coulson’s heart stuttering in his chest, feel the pain racing down his arm, feel his growing panic as he realized he couldn’t take a full breath.

  
Clint took a breath, deliberately expanding his chest, desperately sending that sensation down the Bond to Phil even as he said, “Something’s gone sideways in Port au Prince,” the only time he’d acknowledge what he was feeling through the Bond.

  
Then Clint turned back to the holo-map hovering between him and the agents around the briefing table and traced the mission’s exit route for the third time with his finger, noting the likely choke points where an ambush could be placed.

  
When Phil dropped to his knees in the filthy alleyway in Haiti, Clint felt his own go weak, but he locked them, disguised his swaying by waving toward the first agent on the left, barking, “Contact code!” at her sharply enough that she stuttered her response and he said, “Again!”

  
He quizzed them through Phil’s fingers scrabbling in the slime of rotten fruit crushed into the ancient cobblestones.

  
He drilled them as Phil worked a knee under himself, grasped the edge of a garbage can overflowing with fish guts, moldy bread, and rotten cabbage.

  
He gave them last minute reminders as Phil got his second knee under him and sucked in a searing breath that he punched out again in a hacking cough.

  
Words caught in his throat, Clint cleared it and said, “Get out there and kick some ass, people,” refusing to look at Maria Hill, who’d been sitting in the corner with a tablet on her knee, fingers swiftly recording Clint’s every reaction as thousands of feet below them an agent put away his taser and took Phil’s elbow to steady him.

  
Refused to acknowledge her as the last agent filed out of the briefing room and thousands of feet below Phil shrugged off the hand and walked on shaking legs under his own power, dignity resumed with every step, putting Agent Coulson back on as he climbed into the ops van that would take him to the Quinjet and said, “Did you get what you needed?”

  
Refused to look at Maria Hill as the technician on the bio-monitors thousands of feet below smiled weakly, face nervous with a little awe and a lot of fear at what Phil had just accomplished.  What they’d both just accomplished.

  
Clint said, “You owe Phil a new suit,” as he walked out of the room and down the hall, steps firm, back straight, Bond cataloguing Phil’s condition as he strode toward the bay where the Quinjet would bring him home.

  
Maybe everyone expected them inevitably to fail, waiting and watching, testing and prodding, hoping to find the Bond’s breaking point.

 _  
Fuck their expectations_ , Clint thought. Even on a bad day, they were better Bonded than anyone else could ever be alone or with a partner.

 _  
Fuck their expectations_ , he thought again, watching Phil’s tired, dirty face as he stepped off the Quinjet and strode, master of his domain, across the bay floor and up to Clint, who didn’t try to embrace him, didn’t brush a kiss across his lips, bloody from where he’d bitten them when the voltage had first lanced through him. 

  
On his chest, Phil’s shirt was seared by twin burn marks that straddled the fearsome scar.

  
Clint snorted in derision at the obvious symbolism:  If a god hadn’t succeeded, if death itself had been defeated, how could any of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s draconian tests possibly rip them apart?  
  


“Fuck their expectations,” Phil murmured, and Clint fell in beside him, shoulders almost brushing, matching smiles clearing the corridors as they stalked toward Fury’s office.  
  



End file.
